In Ethiopia, elders dissolve a crisis the traditional way

For a crisis of this scale and import, numerous nonpartisan mediators were needed. Isaac had no problem organizing it: he is famous in Ethiopia for pioneering in the late 1950s the first organized campaign to eradicate illiteracy, which affected over 2.5 million citizens in two decades, and for being the first Ethiopian to get a PhD from Harvard. He also helped establish Harvard's African Studies department.

'Council of elders'

He quickly formed a shimagelewotch – or a "council of elders." It included 25 of the most prominent members of Ethiopian society, including the famed runner, Haile Gebreselassie; a woman imprisoned for seven years by the former ruling Durg; the chairman of the Ethiopian Lawyers Association; doctors; veteran journalists; former parliamentarians; and retired ambassadors.

"We called it the Coalition of Elders," says Isaac, who as its leader shuttled between the jail where the opposition leaders were held and the prime minister's office.

Twenty months later in a rare event in African politics, the political opposition leaders were granted freedom and the right to return to politics by the very party that had charged them with trying to overthrow the government through violence.

In exchange, the oppositionists signed an apology taking collective and individual responsibility for mistakes that led to the violence that erupted following the May 2005 electoral dispute, although a government inquiry had found the security forces to blame.

"As Ethiopians we have learned the important lessons from this episode in our history," declared Capital, a weekly based in Addis Ababa. "The most obvious one is that we have returned to Ethiopia's ancient tradition of mediated solutions."

However, critics such as Al Mariam, a lawyer and professor of political science at California State University in San Bernadino, Calif., says that the traditional mediation was a government tool used to avoid applying international and human rights conventions and Ethiopian constitutional and criminal law.

"To bring out an ancient and anachronistic institution and say, 'We're going to solve it this way' is dishonest and disingenuous," says Mr. Mariam. "We think it's a smoke screen to divert attention, to deceive and hoodwink the international community, to suggest to them that there is some kind of romantic idea that there are African institutions which … are better at solving the internal problems."

A government tool?

Mariam leads a coalition for pushing the US Congress to pass the Ethiopia Democracy and Accountability Act of 2007, which, if passed, would prevent Ethiopia from receiving aid until it releases the opposition leaders and punishes human rights abusers. Two days after the sentences of the opposition leaders, a congressional foreign relations subcommittee marked up the bill for a discussion in the full committee.

Isaac had expressed opposition to the bill in the past and was accused by Mariam of trying to lobby congressmen against it.

"We have no doubt about his sincerity [to help Ethiopia]," says Mariam, "but we believe he is being used as a tool by the regime to sort of deflect international pressure." Isaac declined to comment on the issue, saying he preferred to stay out of politics.

"It's a newish phenomenon that African leaders feel pressure to reverse themselves in these egregious human rights abuses," says Jennifer Cooke, co-director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "I don't think [Prime Minister Meles freed the jailed opposition leaders] from the goodness of his heart. The Council of Elders was a response to both domestic and international pressure. It was a facesaving measure."

Still, she says, "It's a break from the past."

Opinions in Ethiopia differ, but many believe that the solution was a combination of factors. "I think there was likely pressure from America," said Kalkiden Gazaheng, a university student and part-time salesclerk in the capital. "But the mediators were the ones who convinced the sides to agree."

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